Musings on all things Christian. Part of www.faithfulbloggers.com

Primary Menu

Letter to an Atheist

I am a fairly new christian after years of seeking and rejecting various scientific and philosophical arguments.

So I dont have all of the contrary arguments. Never want a book that shows them either.
That would be false.

I was an atheist for a long time, but I did have an experience when I was 19 that kind of supported my faith.

I moved from a house of five down to a lonesome house down in the wilds of dorset. I was very lonely for a time and one day I found a bible that had been given me at school and had more or less followed me round. I picked this thing up and for whatever reason I said “If your real, I am really lonely”

Then the room was filled with unalloyed love, and I was never lonely in fact never alone from that instant.

That rather supports your argument of the desperate looking for a placebo.
But it wasnt like that, it was more a nudge to say give me a chance.

So I rather feel like I cheated a bit really, I had a very real experience. I feel like my faith requires less faith than others.

For a while I was an unquestioning christian.

Then because I am a naturally curious person I looked into other faiths, science, philosophies etc Some of the faiths have very great truths in them, some explain some of the core concepts if christianity even better. Hindu’s have a much better concept of giving of yourself, muslims a much better concept of not judging others.

None of them put them all together as well as Christianity and then you have John 14:6 “I am the way the truth and the light and nobody comes to the father except through me”. As C.S lewis said Jesus was either a madman or son of god, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Professor Kirke advises the young heroes that their sister’s claims of a magical world must logically be taken as either lies, madness, or truth.

You have clearly chosen the latter and I the former.

I can totally see why, if your expecting hard evidence that you can put in a test tube I have none. Although if this were a murder i could probably put you in jail, that’s why its called faith.

Circumstantially the evidence is all around us, evolution explains a plan by all logical thought put in motion. You cant make a cake by just throwing the ingredients around, which is what the big bang asks us to believe, and nobody has the answer to what went bang and what created the thing that went bang, and if its a circle how did the circle come into being. It defies logic, unless you include a creator. The odds so fantastical, the explanations excluding a creator even more ludicrous than the inclusion. So no god hiding behind the sofa but a path to find him. C.S lewis points to us being born with right/wrong and fairness built in from day one. A DNA link to the essential ideas of Jesus as well. If you have children you will have seen that in action, in their dealing with you and other children. Long before their logic can support such ideas its in them. The world nurtures this or rips it away.

I am sure you have lots of arguments that run counter to this but none of them answer the ideas. Your next step is to say man will come to an answer. Mine was that’s enough of an answer, in mathematical terms even when the process is explained the odds of it happening even over millenia become more ludicrous.

So thats about as close as I will ever get to an explanation on “scientific terns”

Here’s the other part

From that moment down in Bournemouth I had a second party in my life, moral, loving, caring, forgiving, accepting non judgmental. So when I accepted him and let him into my life the barrier between those things and me came down.

There’s your crutch that we all have right?
Give me a minute…

From that moment “when I said , please jesus come into my life”

I was changed, changed as a person my character changed. I am kinder, more temperate, more forgiving, more loving, more patient.

My internal landscape changed, I am more content, I am doing better at work, at home, with friends and strangers. It took me a while to rediscover who I was so dramatic was the change.

Then Prayer. Prayer is how we talk to god and he never ever does not answer. Sometimes through the book, but quite often through the things that happen directly after you pray. The list is endless and again like the soup of dust leading to us the coincidences lead up to a reasonable certainty that when I pray things happen.

The Crutch

Jesus asks a lot of us, forgive, love, be kind, etc. The list is large and under any examination hard to do.

Love everyone as you love yourself?

Trust me in this world thats a tough job. Impossible without the changes he made in me from the day I let him in.

Hard to believe without all those every day miracles that happen every time I pray.

So not a crutch, but a challenge and a task of how to “be” in this world, that would be much easier if I could put down. The old me would, this me does not want to. Christians explain this as the Holy Spirit, that which jesus left behind so that we are not orphans, we are not alone, he left this thing that we can interact with via prayer.

Last but not least the Bible.

Read it with an open heart and you cannot but see the work of god that it is. We are taught that when we read there are three things involved, you the book and god. Taken in its entirety, with the greek/english challenges and some societal models that make no sense it is beyond mans creation. Beyond something people can make, then add the interaction with your soul that it has, then add the changes that it makes in you and the things you do and think and say and feel. Shakespeare? I cant interact with shakespeare via hamlet, I can interact with god via the bible.

So now you see why FB is not a vehicle for this.

As I write some sentences I asked for help with, some will never be adequate. I also have the same god with me now as was in that little room down in Bournemouth, that I denied and ran from for SO long, until I had to admit ity was my pride and arrogance in the supremacy of man, in the idea we will conquer and understand all. We wont, we cant.